Throwing Out the Script
by Formulaic
Summary: One year into Voldemort's rein, a confrontation with the Dark Lord catapults the Boy-Who-Lived into 1975. Will he be content to sit around and let the past repeat itself? Absolutely not. Time Travel. Not very HBP or DH compliant. Awesome!Harry. Eventual Harry/Lily/Narcissa/Bellatrix. Not a smutfic.
1. Traveling Light

_Disclaimer:_ _I don't own Harry Potter. _

_For some reason this got stuck in my head, and I need to write it out in order to focus on Konoha's Maelstrom._

_This story is loosely inspired by 'The Future Remapped' by Shezza88, which was sadly abandoned and taken down a long time ago. It's still floating around the net though. This isn't a rewrite, and I'm going to hold off on rereading the original until this takes on a life of its own. I'm approaching this very differently than I am Konoha's Maelstrom. For one, I'm writing this knowing the eventual pairing. So without further ado…_

_**Pairing: Harry/Lily/Narcissa/Bellatrix**_

_In case you managed to get this far without reading the summary. It's not going to be a smutfest._

_As far as I'm concerned, the Lily in the story isn't Harry's mother. Yes, they are genetically related, but she didn't give birth to him or raise him. Harry doesn't really even have any memories of the Lily that did give birth to him. He's not going to be gooey eyed over her at first sight, and he's going to have a weird enough time interacting with her even before romance becomes an issue. Like I said, the pairing is __**eventual**__. _

_Narcissa and Bellatrix aren't going to be closet blood traitors, and they won't have functionally identical personalities. There will be real character development. How the pairing will develop is going to be a major part of the plot, which brings me to the next big difference from my Naruto story. The plot is up in the air. With KM, I've got multiple versions of the plot planned out to like three arcs. With this, I've got… well, a few vague ideas. It's a bit of an experiment. I've got a good feeling about it though._

_Consider yourself warned on the romance issue. I'm not cutting the pairing down. If any of that is intolerable to you, I'm not quite sure why you're reading this. Although if you've gotten this far I don't see any reason you can't stick around a little longer._

_Harry will be powerful from the start. In some senses not quite as powerful as Voldemort or Dumbledore, but he's pushing into their league. The reasons for that shall be obvious._

_Well, the past is pretty much canon up to Order of the Phoenix, and becomes less and less canon compliant from then on. I'll try to make things clear as we move along._

_Special thanks to Last of the Ancients, for being an awesome sounding board.  
_

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**~~~~~~~~~~~Throwing Out the Script~~~~~~~~~~~**

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_**~ Chapter 1: Traveling Light ~**_

It was a beautiful night.

The full moon and stars were set exquisitely on a pitch-black backdrop, bathing the forest in soft light. Leaves were rustling in a light wind, an owl was hooting almost musically, and there was the vague chirping of some sort of insect off in the distance.

It felt wrong to Harry that Voldemort was planning to do an evil ritual on such a nice night. There should be thunderclouds, and eerie silence broken only by twigs snapping under his feet at the wrong moment. This was completely the wrong mood for a showdown.

To be fair, it wasn't like he knew that the ritual was evil. It could be that the Dark Lord was trying to grow back his hair. The whole baldness thing Voldemort had going was pretty comical at times. But all things considered, Harry doubted the ritual was going to be something harmless like that.

_There they are,_ Harry thought as he felt the foul presence of Death Eaters on the edge of his senses. All he had to do to find them was head towards the icky feeling. He made his way towards them stealthily, ignoring for the moment his magic roiling in anticipation. It always reacted to the presence of the new and 'improved' Death Eaters by urging him to utterly annihilate them.

It used to be that the Death Eater starter kit consisted of an ugly mask and an uglier tattoo, but Voldemort had upped the ante the year before. Now many of them were artificially empowered by… something. Something that seemed to taint magic itself, giving them the moniker 'The Tainted'. Anyone with a talent for sensing magic couldn't stand being around Tainted Death Eaters.

Except Voldemort, somehow.

Harry soon found himself at the edge of a clearing. A dozen or so Tainted were up to something in the middle of the clearing, about fifteen meters away from him. He crouched down, hiding a large tree and some bushes, pulling a large diamond out of his pocket and burying it in the ground.

The diamond was a marvelous artifact that had cost him a pretty penny. It had cost him quite a lot of pretty pennies actually. It had a plethora of runes etched along its cleavage, and it was primed to put up incredibly strong wards to stop any kind of teleportation at a moments thought.

Literally.

It was tied to his mind, and could be activated and deactivated with a thought. It needed to recover from being used, so he couldn't deactivate it to apparate behind his opponent and reactivate, but it was an incredibly useful escape mechanism. On deactivation it would also tear down any wards of a similar nature that were weaker than it. That meant wards that weren't anchored, and a lot of ones that were.

It was worth every single one of the five thousand galleons it had cost him. Even if it was a bit irritating having to go and retrieve it later when his enemies had vacated the area.

"Be careful, you fools!" an irritated female voice rang out from the clearing. "Those eggs are fragile!"

_Lestrange,_ Harry thought with mixed feelings. The opportunity to kill the witch was something he'd been hoping to get for a long time, but her presence here was going to make things quite difficult.

Harry zoomed in on the scene with his glasses. He'd had his eyes fixed by Madame Pomfrey when he was sixteen, but Albus had enlightened him as to the reason that many wizards and witches wore glasses when poor eyesight was a problem rather easily fixed by magic. You could put all sorts of nifty spells on glasses. Unfortunately any Wizarding clothing shop proprietor with half a brain put privacy enchantments on their wares, so the transparency functionality was not quite as fun as Harry would have liked.

The Tainted didn't look as bad as they felt on his senses, but that was a testament to how disgusting their magical presence was as they were damn ugly. Their skin was pale and sallow, dry and cracking in places with dark blue veins showing in stark contrast. Pupil-less yellow eyes filled with malice and insanity completed the horrid image.

In exchange for making them certifiably insane and painful to look at, the Taint granted its possessors a considerable boost in their powers. Even annoyances like Draco Malfoy and his goons became serious threats. Although Malfoy had managed to maintain his place as an annoyance with his crazed ranting. He was mostly unintelligible, but every third or so word that came out of his mouth was some derogatory reference to Harry's scar, face, and oddly enough his bum. That aspect of Draco's obsession was something that Harry really could have done without learning about.

The Taint was most helpful to the least skilled, as it stripped away most tactical thinking in favor of uncontrolled urges to perpetuate mindless violence. Their simple-mindedness wasn't much comfort when their _flipendos_ were suddenly lethal battering rams of force. Especially when they tended to use much worse than _flipendo_.

The one very surprising exception to that was Bellatrix Lestrange. It was like her original crazy had already been so bad that the new crazy had pushed her so far that she looped all the way back into saneness. Or relative saneness, at any rate.

A sane Bellatrix was more dangerous than a bat-shit crazy one, and she'd been a formidable foe even when she was a few bludgers too many for a Quodpot game. A sane Bellatrix with Taint empowered magic was _really_ fucking dangerous, even to Harry. And to top it all off, the last vestiges of her once legendary beauty had been brutally wiped away by the Taint.

"Used to be that if you'd die at her wand, you'd at least be able to enjoy the view on your way out," Moody had complained to Harry over a bottle of Ogden's Finest, back when Harry had still been running with the Order. "Now it's just a totally shitty fucking way to go." Harry had valiantly resisted the urge to point out that anyone Moody took out would have a similarly unsavory view on their way to the afterlife.

Harry liked to think of her vanished beauty as karma, but he could understand the sentiment. The pictures of Bellatrix from her schooldays were certainly… well, he wasn't going there. Not even theoretically.

_That's a little better_, Harry thought as he watched her vaporize the unfortunate lackey for being clumsy with the dragon eggs again. Not that it would help much. Twelve Tainted would be difficult but possible to take down if he decided to go in wand blazing. Eleven Tainted plus Lestrange was straight up suicide. He'd have to take her out first to even stand a chance, and he wasn't sure it was even worth the risk of trying yet.

Turning his attention to the items they'd gathered for the ritual, he tried to figure out what the plan was. With Lestrange here to oversee, it had the potential to be something quite significant. He'd managed to find out about tracking certain black market transactions and finding a disturbing pattern. Even though Voldemort had been in charge of Magical Britain for two years he still maintained regulations on trade, and had to go through the less than legal channels to acquire something things. Like three dozen dragon eggs and twenty three liters of Veela blood.

Clearing his mind of all distracting thoughts, Harry loosened the mental restraints on the remnants of Voldemort's Horcrux in his head. He looked over the items that he could see and waited for any kind of recognition. There was a faint sense of something about the combination of purified silver and Dwarven wrought iron, but nothing really got triggered.

He wasn't about to delve into Riddle's memories while on the battlefield. That sort of thing had to be done very carefully in a safe place so that he didn't risk absorbing something from Riddle that he didn't want.

It was at the beginning of his sixth year at Hogwarts that Albus had revealed to him all the details about Voldemort and the war that he'd been holding back, most importantly that Harry was carrying around a piece of the Dark Lord in his head. The reason for the sudden honesty was that the Headmaster had acted stupidly and impulsively by putting on a ring that he should have known was trapped.

The old man's impulsiveness had saddled him with The Withering, a nasty curse that consumed its victim bit by bit every time they used magic, even unconsciously. With less than a year to live even if he never cast another spell Albus had decided to change his plans.

They'd had many discussions about what was to come over the first school term, and many lessons on the mind arts. And on the winter solstice they'd performed a ritual that burned out the 'living' part of the Horcrux in Harry's head by imprinting Albus mind onto his own.

Albus Dumbledore began his next great adventure that very night.

That was how Harry Potter ended up with the knowledge of 1981 Tom Riddle and 1996 Albus Dumbledore tightly sealed in his head.

He didn't automatically know everything they knew, or even anything they knew. Their memories and skills were tightly sealed up so that he didn't become some unholy schizophrenic combination of Voldemort and Dumbledore. Sixteen years of Harry Potter would be crushed under the weight of the two Titans lives. Although the resulting psychopath would probably have a fondness for treacle tart.

What he very carefully did was absorb bits and pieces, starting with Legilimency and Occlumency. Even then, he had to smooth out the differences of between their approaches and deal with any stray thoughts that had hitched a ride. After every battle, he would carefully absorb knowledge on whatever had caught his interest.

There were definitely problems, as learning spells this way came with their originators habits if he wanted to take their skills with the spells as well. Early on Harry had nearly blasted Ron's head off for trying to get him to rejoin the Quidditch Team too persistently before realizing how deeply personality was embedded in knowledge. That hadn't been the last of his problems with personality contamination either.

When the war had started up in earnest, Harry was still a relative nobody in terms of skill. He was good deal better than anyone else his age, but still not match for the kinds of opponents he would be facing in his quest to destroy the Horcruxes. He'd come up with what he thought was a foolproof trick to help out on that front.

He connected his reflexes to the Riddle memories. There was no memory or skill transfer involved. If Harry didn't know how to deal with something, Riddle's memories would react for him. If he cast a spell like that, he wouldn't know how to cast it afterwards.

He would have preferred using Albus's memories for the trick, but there was a fundamental difference between a shattered Horcrux and the impression of his mentor seared into his mind. Riddle's memories resided in the husk of the Horcrux, a further barrier between them and Harry's mind.

Albus hadn't parted with a piece of his soul, so his gift was far less insulated. The transfer of knowledge and skills was easier, but the risk of mental contamination and the difficulty of removing that contamination were both much higher.

Harry's first tentative explorations into that method of linking to Albus's reflexes had left him with a fondness for smoking Gleamblossom from a pipe. And the urge to grow a long beard so that he could look like Gandalf while doing so. He didn't mind that particular habit as Gleamblossom had a purifying effect on his magic, and smoking a pipe reminded him of when he wanted to grow up to be Sherlock Holmes.

He did purge the desire for a beard though. That took a week's worth of meditation.

All in all it had been relatively harmless. But the next time he tried might not be so easy to brush off. With his luck he would end up pining after Gellert Grindelwald. That piece of the Headmaster's history had him treating Albus's memories with _extreme_ caution. He'd much rather make stupid anagrams with his name than deal with that.

Ron and Hermione had expressed concerns for his increasingly dark tactics, but Harry had waved them off. They didn't know about the memories, so they couldn't understand that he was just harmlessly borrowing Voldemort's expertise from time to time. He didn't realize that it wasn't so harmless until a pensieve review of a battle had revealed the cold smile on his face as he beheaded Marcus Flint.

By that point Ron, Hermione, and most of the Order members they collaborated with enough to see him in battle were wary of him. Scared even. No one knew about the memories, and even if he wanted to telling them would likely make it worse. So he'd distanced himself from them, and not even his two oldest friends had put up a fuss. There were traces of Voldemort's ruthlessness in battle that he would probably never be able to rid himself of, but he'd been much more careful about contamination since then.

The hairs on the back of Harry's neck raised, and he found himself spinning around almost not of his own volition.

There was a sound like an electrical zap as he batted away the mass of writhing tentacles made of purple energy bearing down on him. He responded with a concussive wave of force.

His opponent was undaunted by the attack, slashing his wand straight down and seemingly slicing through the blast. The ground on either side of him was ravaged by the spell but he stood unharmed, continuing the downward motion of his wand to stab it in the ground.

Harry abandoned his next spell in favor of pumping magic into his legs and launching himself ten meters into the air and back into a flip. The ground where he'd stood erupted into a pillar of lava. He landed partway into the clearing, his instinctive shield catching the few globs of hot magma that had splashed his way when the pillar came crashing down.

_I don't think I'm getting my diamond back,_ Harry thought forlornly as he looked at the pond of lava that covered where he'd buried his enchanted gem. _My precious…_

But the diamond was fair trade for getting a chance at taking out the Dark Lord, whose presence actually increased Harry's chances of success.

"Lord Voldemort," Harry greeted calmly as his nemesis strolled across the lava casually, ignoring the fact that it should incinerate him.

"Harry Potter. How delightful it is to see you again after all this time. You've been doing rather well for yourself, I see."

_Still bald I see_, Harry joked to himself as he looked at the Dark Lord properly for the first time in over a year.

During what had ended up being called 'The Battle of Hogwarts' Ron had gloatingly revealed that they not only knew of the Horcruxes, but had also destroyed them all. He'd been provoked by Lucius Malfoy commenting on how he and his whole family were useless dead weight, and reacted in his typically hotheaded manner. Rattled by the possibility that he might not be immortal anymore, Voldemort had done the smart thing and fled the battlefield. He'd never put himself in direct confrontation with Harry since, as splitting his soul further wasn't possible.

Voldemort was grinning like the cat that ate the canary, setting the Boy-Who-Lived on edge. He was the canary in that simile, and he was completely uneaten. Wasn't he?

_Something's up,_ Harry realized. _Fuck, I hope he hasn't made himself immortal again._

Under normal circumstances, being surrounded by the Tainted, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Voldemort would mean that he was about to be squished like a bug. Even just facing Voldemort on his own would end with the same result. A bigger, meaner bug – maybe with a stinger – but a bug all the same. But Voldemort had the Elder Wand.

Harry was the Master of Death, although he had no idea what that actually meant. When Albus, the previous owner of the Elder Wand, died possession had fallen to Harry. That made him the owner of all three of the Deathly Hallows. Supposedly that was pretty special, but there weren't any records on why, and he certainly hadn't noticed anything to do with it.

Albus had been buried with the wand. Voldemort had been searching for the legendary deathstick, so a few subtle clues had led him to think he hit the jackpot. A bit of grave robbery later and the Dark Lord thought he was unbeatable. Which he essentially was, but only on his own merits.

It was a cautionary measure on Harry and Albus's parts. If Voldemort at any point realized that his Horcruxes were being destroyed, or were destroyed, he wasn't likely to put himself in a dangerous position. But if he thought that he had a wand that made him undefeatable he wasn't going to hide away. Even if he never caught on to his loss of immortality, believing he was unbeatable would make him more eager to fight Harry when the time came.

The owner of the Elder Wand wielding the Elder Wand was unbeatable. But more importantly for Harry, the owner of the Elder Wand with the wand being used _against_ him was unbeatable. Neither situation guaranteed the defeat of one's opponent, but as long as he was fighting back they wouldn't be able to take him down. And if it meant being able to take down Voldemort, Harry would suffer even absorbing Albus's love for lemon drops and Gellert Grindelwald.

But only as a last resort. And then he'd go into isolation for however many years it took meditate that out of his brain.

With Voldemort using the Elder Wand, they could not defeat Harry.

There was still the problem of why exactly Voldemort had shown up. He'd somehow clearly known that Harry would be there. He'd avoided Harry like the plague even with the wand for over a year, so what had changed?

The sound of a spell hitting something behind him startled Harry.

He reflexively activated the 'Eyes in the Back of My Head' feature of his glasses, one lens showing the what was going on behind him while he kept the majority of his attention on Voldemort. There was a quickly fading glow in the air behind him, as though something had hit a shield.

_I've got a bad feeling about this,_ Harry thought as he noticed a slight silvery glow by his feet.

There were silver lines in the ground around him, forming complex runes. A quick glance showed that he was in a in a pentagon of runes. The pentagon he was in was in between two other pentagons, and he could see they were set in a circle around the clearing comprised of a lot more pentagons. Without counting, Harry would guess there were probably thirty-seven in total. One for every dragon egg, and then one for him.

"Good help is so hard to find," Voldemort said in mock disappointment. "Bella, dear."

Bella dear obliged by cursing the Tainted who'd tried to attack Harry into gory bits.

"I don't know why you even bother with them," Harry said, hiding his tenseness at the realization that he was probably trapped. "The Tainted are so ugly. And stupid. And smelly. And did I mention stupid? Oh, and _perfringo_!"

The powerful silver light of his shield piercer screeched as it dissipated harmlessly against the invisible barrier between him and Voldemort, who merely smiled at the attempt on his life.

"I'm onto you now, Harry Potter." Voldemort drew out his name as though savoring it, ignoring Harry throwing powerful curses against the shield. "It's quite clever of you, fishing for any information you might be able to check against that nifty little Horcrux in your head."

The Dark Lord was smiling like a cat that had just eaten five canaries and was looking at another ten. A big, dangerous cat. Like a saber tooth tiger. Well, no use denying it at this point. Harry gave up trying to break the barrier with spells for the moment.

"Ok, you got me," Harry shrugged, loosening the protections on Albus's knowledge. Whatever these runes were, they were something far more sophisticated than Voldemort had been comfortable working with in 1981. "What gave it away?"

"Oh, the little things. How you always seemed to know things you shouldn't. How your dueling style seemed to match mine."

"Rookwood," Harry realized. "Should have never let the bastard get away." He'd had other priorities at the time.

"Oh yes, the memory of that fight was quite enlightening," Voldemort said smugly. "And from there it was a simple matter to give you breadcrumbs to follow. I thought you might be watching my old procurement networks, so I simply let you solve a few puzzles so you thought you were being clever. And you so obligingly led yourself straight to your own defeat."

"Don't count me out so quickly," Harry said. "But by all means, continue with your evil overlord monologue laying out all the details of your plan, so that when I do break free I can foil them. You know, run of the mill hero stuff."

Albus's imprint wasn't reacting to the runes any better than Riddle's Horcrux, so it was all bravado on Harry's part.

_Brute force it is,_ Harry thought to himself. _Again_. A few slashes of his wand drew a rudimentary disruption matrix on the ground around him.

"I'm afraid you shall not be the Hero today, Harry Potter. This is how Merlin sealed away the thirty-seven Rabisu demons, outside of time and space."

"Demons? Is that how you made the Tainted? And stop saying my name like that. It's creepy. Even if there are other's Harrys around here, it's pretty obvious you're talking to me."

Nothing Voldemort was saying was resonating with the dead Horcrux. It could just be that he was making shit up, though Harry wasn't betting on it.

Harry reached into his pocket, pulling out a vial of dark red liquid. He popped the cork and downed it as quickly as he could, struggling not to retch. Dragon Heartblood was not to be taken lightly, and he was definitely going to be feeling it in the morning. If he survived to feel it. The tingling, pins and needles, and itching began almost immediately in his extremities.

"Still trying to drag my secrets out of me? You remind me so much of myself sometimes, Harry Potter, that it seems almost a shame to that you'll soon be gone forever. But I shan't regret it. You see, Harry Potter, you'll soon be sealed outside time, protecting my Horcrux for all eternity. And history shall write its way around you as though you never existed. Even I shall forget you, Harry Potter, and that is why I say your name. A final gesture of recognition and respect for my last great adversary."

Oddly enough, Harry was ever so slightly touched Voldemort's gesture. It was still weird and creepy, but he thought it might be genuine. But if it was a petty attempt at annoying Harry, it was working pretty well.

_He thinks the Horcrux in my head is still 'alive'_, he thought, keeping the triumph he was feeling off his face. Voldemort was mortal, and didn't even know it. But would this count as a defeat for Harry, switching the allegiance of the Elder Wand? If he continued to exist, even outside space and time (whatever that meant), then he didn't think it counted. But he wasn't going to bet on it.

"Wait a minute there," Harry said as he realized something. "First off I appreciate the sentiment, really, but it's still weird. Also, if Merlin sealed these rabbitu demons outside of space and time and history erased them, how did you find out about them?"

"It is a riveting tale, Harry Potter, and I truly wish I had the time to regale you with it. Alas, the time for our parting draws near."

Voldemort walked through the barrier as if it wasn't even there.

Harry automatically tried to burn him to a crisp with white-hot flames, which went through him like he was a ghost or projection. Harry stopped the spell in disappointment.

"Harry Potter," Voldemort admonished, and Harry's eye twitched at the repetition of his full name. He wasn't feeling the slightest bit recognized or respected by it. Just annoyed. "We aren't even on the same plane of existence any more." He proved his statement by walking straight through Harry and the other side of the pentagon to join his minions.

"That could be a problem," Harry muttered as he turned to face the inside of the clearing. The effects of the blood he'd consumed had almost reached his heart, and the window of opportunity for escape seemed to be closing fast.

"Bella, my most loyal." There was something in the Dark Lord's voice, an edge that belied his words. "I have decided that you shall have the honor of activating the ritual."

"Master?" Bellatrix asked, her voice trembling slightly. And not with joy. She seemed to be struggling with something for a moment before becoming resigned. "Thank you, Master."

_Where's all the respect and recognition now?_ Harry thought a bit petulantly as he watched Voldemort levitate the dragon eggs into the other pentagons. _Or… oh_.

The look on Bellatrix's face as she approached clinched it for him. Activating the ritual wasn't an honor. It was a sacrifice.

Voldemort assuming power over Magical Britain had been a rude surprise to just about everyone, his supporters included. Whatever they thought the Dark Lord's rule was going to be like certainly wasn't what they got. He didn't give a shit about the Pureblood Agenda, and when their support wasn't essential to his power base he dropped all pretense of caring.

When he started empowering with the Taint, it was the pureblood families who received it first. Especially those that expressed even the slightest discontent with the way things were turning out. It turned them into utterly loyal, psychotic minions, who didn't care that Voldemort was desecrating everything they thought they were fighting for.

Except for Bellatrix Lestrange.

She saw her master's disregard the traditions and customs her family had held in such esteem.

She saw his callous disdain for the nobility of lineage, his amusement at the once great families falling into ruin.

She watched as he twisted, corrupted, and destroyed the society that he promised to restore to its former glory.

And now, there was no room in the new world order for Bellatrix Lestrange. No room for a lieutenant who wasn't a hundred and fifty percent behind his tyrannical rule.

Harry wanted to revel in the broken look in her eyes. This was the woman who killed Sirius, who tortured Neville's parents into insanity. This was the woman who delighted in hunting down muggleborns and violently ending their lives.

She stood for nearly everything in the world he was vehemently against. Discrimination. Abuse of power. Sadism. The list went on and on.

She _deserved_ to be broken and shattered.

But as Bellatrix Lestrange stood before him, lacking the fire in her soul that had defined her, Harry couldn't help but feel that it was _wrong_. As horrid as her methods were, she had fought for her ideals, twisted though they may be.

Harry couldn't bring himself to rejoice in her shattered dreams. Not even a little bit.

She gave him a wan smile as their eyes met, almost as though she could sense the unexpected turn of his thoughts. Harry shrugged, uncomfortable with the whole situation. Sympathizing with Sirius's murderer wasn't something that he would have thought even remotely possible, and it was seriously wigging him out.

Thankfully, standing still and being wigged out would have to wait for later. The irregular pounding of his heart and sudden dizziness signaled that the Dragon Heartblood had fully saturated his system. His hands were shaking with nervous energy.

Harry flipped his wand into a reverse grip, and stabbed downwards with a loud yell, falling to one knee and shoving every bit of magic at his disposal into the spell.

"_Elido Conminuo!_"

There was a gong-like noise as he embedded his wand all the way to the handle into the ground. The vibrations from the sound reverberated through him, making his jaw ache, but he continued pushing his magic as far as it would go.

"It is time, Bella," Voldemort drawled unconcernedly. It seemed that Harry's efforts to break his cage wasn't worth the slightest bit of worry.

Bellatrix drew and ornate, jagged dagger from her robes. Her hands were trembling as she extended the free hand palm up, bringing the knife above it.

Their eyes met again.

Harry wanted to say something pithy, like 'I'll see you in Hell!' but the humming feedback of his spell had him clenching his teeth too tightly to get a word out.

Suddenly, Bellatrix was smiling. The fire had returned to her eyes, making her look crazy again. She brought down the dagger, but not on her hand.

Mirroring Harry, she came down on one knee, slamming the blade into the outermost runes. There was a shower of sparks where the dagger met the runes.

Harry looked on in shock, almost losing his concentration on his spell completely. She stabbed at the runes one, two, three, _four_ times – each time accompanied by enough sparks to make a Weasley Wizard Wheezes firework jealous – before a black tendril of cloth snaked around her neck, halting her fifth stab.

"_**BELLATRIX!**_"

Voldemort's roar was inhuman, howling through the air like a thousand voices crying out in agony. Harry could _feel_ the force of his magic behind his voice pressing down like a physical presence.

There was a moment of perfect stillness. Bellatrix shrugged as her eyes met his for the last time, her smile playful, and then she was yanked backwards so abruptly he could hear her neck snap.

"_**GO!**_" the Dark Lord screamed, and the Tainted he was looking at was actually launched towards Harry as if he had been banished.

"_**AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!**_" Snakeface was not happy in the slightest. There was a wet crackling and squelching sound, but Harry dared not spare a glance to ascertain the fate of Bellatrix's corpse.

The hulking figure that Voldemort had sent to him skidded to a stop clumsily, scrabbling for the dagger that had been dropped. Harry recognized that it was either Crabbe or Goyle – he'd never bothered to learn which was which. Well, other than that time with the polyjuice, but his brain had probably purged the distinction as unnecessary after that. They always went around as a pair, so what was the point?

Crabbeorgoyle sliced down on his hand, spraying black blood on the runes, which burst into green flames. The flames quickly traveled to all the other runes, and up the trail of blood to catch the Tainted on fire. Crabbeorgoyle screamed, a piercing feminine sound, and tried to run away. The flames actually reached out and grabbed him, slamming him against the runes. His screams faded into a wet gurgling sound that wasn't any better as he writhed and struggled to get away from the flames that were consuming him.

Harry couldn't spare any more thought to anything but the spell he was powering. The activation of the ritual had slammed down on him, and the edges of his vision were darkening as pressure threatened to make him black out. It was getting harder and harder to breathe, and his entire body felt like it was being crushed, grinded, and warped.

There was nothing. Nothing but the pain, the pressure, the pain, the pain, the pain…

And then he could breathe again. So he did, with hacking coughs while holding down the urge to vomit.

Riddle's instincts came to the fore in his panicky state, and he swung his wand in a wide arc to summon Fiendfyre in all directions so as to drive off his enemies. Or at least, that was the plan.

"What?" Harry asked dumbly when nothing happened. The shock allowed him to shove Riddle's instincts down and assert control.

He had no wand in his hand. He had no robe in which to search for his wand. He had no bloody clothes on at all.

Oh, and it was daytime.

And he was BLOODY NAKED!

Harry squinted as he looked around the clearing, crouching so that he was ready to move at a moments notice. His nethers dangled distractingly at the movement, but thankfully it seemed as though Voldemort wasn't there to witness it. There would be no recognition and respect from his nemesis after seeing this spectacle.

Everything was blurry, as though his vision had reverted to its original horrendous near blindness. That was not great.

He was naked, without a wand, blind as a bat, aching all over, and even his bloody magic was hurting. He was definitely feeling the effects of that stupid Dragon Heartblood now. The pain was the worst in his left hand, which was feeling very stiff. He raised it to eye-level so he could squint at it.

_Ah shit,_ Harry thought as he was the crisscrossing veins of gold and black seared into his palm, the back of his hand, and partway up his middle finger. _There goes the Resurrection Stone. Fuck._ Well, at least he knew where one thing ended up.

He carefully walked to the edge of the clearing, wincing as the ground victimized his poor soft feet. Even blind as he was, he should have seen some evidence of the ritual, or the battle. But there was nothing. Not even the faintest hint that the ground he was standing on had been a pond of lava not ten minutes before.

Harry had the sinking feeling that something wasn't quite right.

_How long have I been sealed away?_ Harry wondered. At the very least, it had to have been ten hours, judging by the daylight. But the lack of any evidence of that night suggested far longer. Was it a month? A year? Years even?

There was no sign of his stuff anywhere, so he decided to get the hell out of there before someone could come and take a picture of the naked Boy-Who-Lived. Or worse.

It was a bit of a challenge to center himself enough to risk apparating with his headache and other woes, but he did so and firmly pictured Grimmauld Place in his mind. He pushed, his magic protesting painfully, but he found himself in the familiar tube of pain and misery otherwise known as apparition. Other than the initial hiccups, everything went fine. No pieces left behind, brushed up against the wards and–

"FUCK!" Harry squealed in an unmanly fashion as he was slammed back into the clearing, falling to the ground. "FUCKING FUCK BLOODY FUCK!" He curled into the fetal position, holding his head in his arms and trying not to cry. It was like someone had driven a red-hot iron pick-axe into his brain.

When apparating, a wizard or witch was always supposed to be cognizant of unfamiliar wards. It wasn't terribly difficult to abort, although it was the highest contributor to splinching. Harry had felt the wards. They were _his_ wards, so they should have let him through. The Black wards were pretty darn strong, so he needed to push his way through them even when he was granted access. That meant that he'd essentially slammed straight on into some of the most temperamental anti-apparition wards he'd ever felt as hard as he could, and they'd smacked him down and stomped on his balls. Metaphorically, at least.

"What the FUCK!" Harry screamed for good measure. He lay there for ten minutes, waiting for the new headache to ebb enough to stand up again. He climbed unsteadily to his feet.

_Don't panic_, he told himself. He was totally panicking. _Ok, contingencies. What exactly was my 'I'm naked, wandless, and locked out of my house' plan? Uh… nothing. Because this SHOULDN'T FUCKING BE HAPPENING!_

Then the light bulb went off in his head, ratcheting up his headache a bit, but it was worth it. He had an emergency stash in his old room at the Dursley's house, hidden under the loose floorboard and some Notice-Me-Nots. It even had a spare wand, which would be really useful right now. It didn't have any clothes, unfortunately, but those he could just steal from Dudley. Or transfigure.

It was much harder to summon up the concentration necessary for apparition this time, but he still managed it. He forced himself into the horrific tube of pain, misery, and suffering once more. This time, he was carefully watching for any signs of wards. Pulling that stunt twice in a row would turn him into a vegetable. Or worse, Crabbeorgoyle. Actually, that thug was dead. Goyleorcrabbe then.

Thankfully, there were no wards and he arrived safely. He did fall to his knees gasping for breath though, as his magic was _really_ protesting all the abuse it had been taking lately.

"What the…" Harry said as he got up and took stock of the room. It was his old room… but not. The wallpaper was different, the floor looked nicer. And there was a twin-sized bed that looked a lot nicer than his decrepit old cot even with its pink covers.

_Did the Dursleys move?_ Harry wondered as he caught sight of the boxes. Someone had either just moved in, or was in the process of moving in. _Not my problem_, he decided.

The first sign of trouble was the total lack of any Notice-Me-Not charms. Then, the loose floorboard was quite a lot tighter than he remembered. To top it all off, his wonderful stash had been replaced by a tin box filled with plastic soldiers.

"Today can not get any worse," Harry decided. An odd shiver of foreboding ran through him as he said it. "Screw you Murphy, this _literally_ cannot get any worse."

He wanted to sit on the comfy looking bed, or better yet sleep in it. But that seemed rude, what with his exposed danglies and all.

A little curious now that he had no idea what to do next, Harry found himself gravitating towards the desk. There was an envelope made of a familiar material, and a scent that was niggling at him. He picked it up and brought it closer to his face. Written in overly ornate calligraphy was the word _Lily_, and he recognized the scents as he got a better whiff of it. Ashwinder eggs and peppermint. But that would mean–

His creeping suspicions were cut off by a high pitched scream, and Harry spun towards the door, almost tripping and falling.

Harry saw a girl with red hair holding a floor lamp. Then the lamp was rather forcefully introduced to the top of his head, and he decided that it would be an amazing time to take a nap.

* * *

_Chapter 2: For Want of a Wand_

"_There's a perfectly good explanation for why I was naked in your room, sniffing your letter." Harry frowned. "That sounded way worse out loud than I was expecting."_

* * *

_AN: I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. The premise for the botched ritual could be used for just about anything to do with time travel or dimension travel, so I think I might be reusing it down the line._

_In case anyone is wondering, the future timeline where Harry came from doesn't exist anymore as far as this story is concerned. It's been unwritten._

_Gleamblossom is a flower in Skyrim, which has the properties resist magic and regenerate health. And some bad stuff that isn't relevant. I thought it was a fun little reference._

_Rabisu is a demon in Mesopotamian and Akkadian mythology._


	2. For Want of a Wand

_AN: I was pleasantly surprised that the single objection to the pairing I received was that the ages of the participants made it very unlikely. This is true. In canon, Bellatrix is five years older than Narcissa and ten years older than Lily. In this fic, however, they are all Hogwarts age. The specifics will be elaborated on in a couple of chapters. Yay for author power!_

_On the issue of canon, there is another thing I want to address. The Galleon._

_I spent far too much time trying to make the canon view of currency make sense, and got nowhere. One Galleon being worth 5 pounds __**does not hold up**__. That's even without taking into account that Galleons are supposedly made out of gold. So I'm deliberately breaking from canon and saying that in today's terms 1 Galleon = 100 pounds. That means that a Galleon was worth roughly 53 pounds in 1991, and 11 pounds in 1975. Assuming that there's not really any noticeable inflation in the Wizarding World._

_Thanks again to Last of the Ancients for all his help. Especially for bugging me until I worked out something resembling a plot._

* * *

**~~~~~~~~~~~ Throwing Out the Script ~~~~~~~~~~~**

* * *

**~ Chapter 2: For Want of a Wand ~**

_Note to self, Murphy's a dick._

That was Harry's first thought as he woke up, accompanied by a throbbing ache on the top of his head. Well, his actual first thought was _hide the purple!_ but that didn't count because it wasn't actually coherent.

"Oh, that smarts," he mumbled, his instinctive move to try and press a hand against his head revealing another problem. His hands were tied. "Oh, fuck you Murphy."

He was lying on his back on the wooden floor beside a bed. His hands tied together above his head on the other side of one of the bed frame's heavy wooden legs by a jump rope of all things. His nakedness had been covered with a sheet, which he appreciated despite it probably not having been put there for his sake.

A few experimental tugs gave him the impression that untying his hands was not going to be a simple matter.

By accident or design the method by which he'd been bound was actually quite restricting. He couldn't sit up properly because that would try to force his arms behind his back, requiring dislocation. As if that weren't enough, any movement threatened to dislodge the sheet covering him. He would have thought these inconveniences were expertly intentional if not for the ridiculous circumstances and the lack of Anti-Apparition wards.

Harry awkwardly raised his head to look around the room. He was alone and the door was closed.

There was a soft pop and he was standing in the middle of the room.

"Hn," Harry groaned, rubbing the bruise on his head with his now free hands. That Apparition had gone much better than the previous two, but he was definitely still recovering from whatever the ritual had done to him. A short-range line of sight Apparition should have been silent and effortless for him.

The good news was his vision was clearer than before. Not completely restored, but enough to be workable, and it suggested that he was recovering quite well.

Snatching the sheet off the floor Harry wrapped himself in it and made his way back to the desk. If he had any common sense he should be getting the hell away from Privet Drive, but his suspicions were too much to ignore. His emergency stash being replaced by toys, the new look of the room, a letter smelling of potions ingredients addressed to 'Lily', and a redheaded girl?

_Don't jump to any conclusions, _Harry told himself. The letter he'd seen before getting brained was gone, but searching through the desk turned up two other letters quite quickly, both signed by Deputy Headmistress McGonagall. One was a list of supplies for a fifth year student at Hogwarts, and the other was a letter congratulating Lily Evans on becoming a Prefect.

_Well… fuck. This could be a problem._

That would explain why the wards at Grimmauld Place were ignoring him. He wasn't Lord Black anymore as far as they were concerned. Or not yet. Something like that. Harry wasn't ready to believe he was twenty something years in the past quite yet, but it was looking at least circumstantially possible. A botched ritual meant to seal him outside of time sending him back in time wasn't too farfetched… well, it was too early to say at this point.

Harry quickly checked through the drawers looking for anything useful. A wand, information, food…

_I'm hungry,_ Harry realized, frowning. As if being wandless, naked, and possibly in the past wasn't bad enough. _That's just great._

A quick search of the room didn't turn up anything useful either. Lily, if that's who she really was, apparently was still in the process of moving in. It was weird to think that his room had once been hers. He'd always been under the impression that the Dursleys had bought the house, not his grandparents.

Keeping the sheet wrapped around him, Harry snuck into the hallway carefully. The hallway was empty but he heard muffled voices coming from the master bedroom. They got clearer as he stealthily made his way towards it, positioning himself by the closed door.

"...should go to the police," a woman's voice said.

A girls voice answered her. "But he was looking at my stuff! If he saw something about magic I could be in trouble for breaking the Statute of Secrecy."

"Well then let's go to the magical police."

"Aurors mum, and what if he didn't see anything?"

"Better safe than sorry. If there's even a chance he saw anything I'm sure the Aurors will understand. How do we contact them?" It was a man who was speaking this time.

"There's a bunch of signaling spells, but I've only memorized the the emergency one. I don't think this counts. I should have the whole list somewhere in my trunk. I'll go get it."

Thinking quickly, Harry positioned himself on the side of the door opposite the stairs. There hadn't been a trunk in the room, so it was mostly likely on the ground floor. The redheaded girl exited the room, turning for the stairs without so much as a glance in his direction. Her wand was in the back right pocket of her jeans, making it almost absurdly easy to steal.

Harry darted forward, one hand keeping the sheet from falling off him and the other deftly reaching to snatch the wand. The instant his fingers were on it there was an almost tangible feeling of relaxation and relief flowing through him. Being wandless had been making him tense and on edge to an extent that he hadn't realized until it was gone.

"Lily!" the man's voice yelled out in warning as Harry hopped back so he wasn't in front of the open door.

Lily spun around, freezing in shock as she saw him with her wand in hand. "You, you were, but–"

Harry nearly winced at the terror his passive Legilimency was picking up from her. "I got cold feet." His tone was light and reassuring. "Letting a girl tie me up naked to her bed is much more of a third date kind of thing for me." He was hoping that the humor would lighten the mood.

She was standing stock still in fright. Harry took the opportunity look at her. Somehow he'd been expecting to react… well more, to be honest. There was no urge to call her 'Mum', no longing to embrace her, no surge of love. There was no doubt looking at her that she was a teenage Lily Evans, but that was it. She wasn't some random stranger to him, but emotionally speaking she wasn't much more.

Harry wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but this teenage girl in front of him was not his mother. She hadn't given birth to him, raised him for the first year of his life, and sacrificed herself for him. There was in her the potential to be very much like that woman, perhaps even exactly like her if he hadn't already irrevocably changed the past with his presence. But even if everything went as before and she had a son named Harry with green eyes and black hair, that Harry would not be him.

But just because she wasn't his mother didn't mean he was comfortable with how scared he was making her.

"I'm not going to hurt anyone, this is just a big misunderstanding. I'm doing you a favor really. Keeping your wand in your back pocket is just begging to have your bum blown off," Harry said, smirking. "It'd be a shame to lose one as nice as yours. Go back into the room and we'll get this sorted without any violence, ok?" Lily's terror had faded considerably, but part of it had been replaced by indignation. Harry felt a little weird that he'd noticed her in that way, but she was very pretty so he shrugged it off. It was better than perving on Lestrange after all.

Harry picked up a surge of relief from her as she caught sight of something in the room, running in. _Oh bugger,_ he thought as he looked in and saw her and an older woman hiding behind a tall man with auburn hair streaked with grey, holding a double barrelled shotgun. Most likely this was Lily's father, whose name no one had ever bothered telling Harry.

"Put the stick down lad," the man said, hesitating on the word stick as though he were thinking of saying something else first. Like wand. "This doesn't have to end badly."

Harry dialed down his passive Legilimency so he was just picking up on the man's surface feelings, as sensing three completely unshielded minds was doing a nasty number on his headache. The only thing he needed was to watch out for any intent to pull the trigger so he could react to that. It would be trivial to shield, or disarm or otherwise incapacitate the man, but there was also the Trace to consider.

He didn't want to bring the Aurors down on him. He could cast a Baffling Ward to hide his magic but that would take a few seconds to cast and be too obvious to hide. The man would shoot at him, forcing Harry to shield or to disarm him beforehand, which would be caught by the Trace. It was a catch 22. He wasn't afraid of the Aurors, but he was trying to keep a low profile until he could figure out what was going on.

"I know this is a wand, so you don't have to beat around the bush there. This is just a horrible misunderstanding," Harry tried to explain. "I don't much fancy getting tied up again."

"Well then you shouldn't go around being weird and naked in other people's rooms!" Lily chimed in, the shotgun apparently making her feel rather safer.

"There's a perfectly good explanation for why I was naked in your room, sniffing your letter." Harry frowned. "That sounded way worse out loud than I was expecting."

"If this is just a misunderstanding, put down the wand and we can talk this out," the man tried to convince him. "I can pull this trigger a lot faster than you can blurt out latin, so it's not really helping you to have it and it's just making things a lot more tense than they have to be."

Harry almost sighed in exasperation. Muggleborns and their parents tended to have a rather inaccurate view of just how out of touch the Wizarding World really was, especially when it came to technology. The parallels between the Wizarding World and medieval times for muggles were thought to extend far beyond what they really were. It wasn't their fault, not really.

Muggleborns didn't take Muggle Studies classes, after all, assuming they already knew more than the class could possibly teach. Unless they were Hermione Granger, of course, and even she dropped the class after deciding that she didn't have to take every damn class Hogwarts offered. Most of Muggle Studies was nothing new for the muggle raised up until N.E.W.T level, but the point of the class wasn't simply to inform students about the muggle world–Wizardkind really didn't care about that. What mattered was what effects the worlds did and could have on each other, both direct and indirect.

"Mr…" Harry trailed off, letting Lily's wand drift off to the side non-threateningly, drawing small circles with it seemingly subconsciously.

"Evans," the man supplied, relaxing a bit. "William Evans."

"Mr. Evans, please don't take this as a threat but I can cast nonverbally, and I just cast a Fire Suppression Ward," Harry said cautiously. He hadn't really cast anything, but leaving William with the impression that he was in charge of the situation wouldn't be helpful at all.

"Fire suppression? That doesn't even make any–oh, because it's called a firearm, ahahahaha!" William's tension disappeared as he chuckled, a deep and booming sound. "That's not how it works."

"Isn't that a fireleg though?" Harry joked lamely, milking the humor for all it was worth. He much preferred being laughed at to being feared. At least from this family. "It's a bit long to be an arm, isn't it?" Lily giggled, which was an improvement. "Kidding, kidding. Guns have been around a long time, and the basics of their function have not changed overly much. In order for the gunpowder to propel anything down that barrel, it has to ignite. Thus, a basic and standard Fire Suppression renders any firearm within its boundaries rather useless." A bit of Albus's manner slipped through as he explained. All of his explanation had been true, except for the part where he claimed to have already cast the ward.

Harry was hoping that William wasn't the sort of man to try shooting him on the chance that he was lying, but it wouldn't be a fatal problem if he did. Shielding a projectile, or many projectiles if it was using buckshot wouldn't be a challenge at all if they weren't magically empowered. He would just prefer to get through this without using any magic and alerting the Aurors. If Lily had been well behaved it was doubtful she'd know exactly how the Trace worked and what would have happened if he had used magic.

"Ah, that makes sense," William said uncomfortably, his shotgun not making him feel very safe any more. He wasn't as tense as he had been when Harry had first shown up, hopefully because Harry had been acting reasonably.

"So how about you set down the gun, I'll set down the wand, and we can discuss like reasonable people. Or as reasonable as we can be when one of us is dressed in just a sheet," Harry amended.

William narrowed his eyes at Harry. "If it's useless, why do you care if I'm still holding it?"

"As a show of trust, so we can relax a little more," Harry lied. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to be randomly shot at this point, but no need to risk anything, right? "Here, I'll go first."

Harry took a few steps and laid down the wand on a table, carefully threading his magic around the handle. Albus Dumbledore had been a true master of wandless magic, using every subtle possibility to its fullest potential and then some. Harry wasn't in Albus's league, but he was no slouch. He returned to his position by the door, raising an eyebrow at William to say _your turn_.

A conflicted expression appeared on William's face briefly, before settling into a resigned look as he aimed his gun more firmly at Harry. "Sorry lad, but I'm can't take any risks, not with my family. Get your wand Lils."

_Guess he didn't buy the ward story,_ Harry thought. _Can't really blame him for that though._ He never would have put down the wand if it truly put him in a helpless position, but he'd been hoping to get through this amiably. If his passive Legilimency gave even the slightest indication that he was in danger of being shot it would be easy to apparate away, or snatch the wand back using the wandless anchor he'd put on it.

Lily crossed the room, keeping as much distance between them as she could. As soon as she was close enough to grab her wand she did, and hurried back to her father. She stood a bit behind him and to the side, aiming her wand at him. Harry smiled as his Legilimency caught a stray thought from her, an urge to stick her tongue out at him.

"You said there was a reasonable explanation for all this?" William said, relaxing now that Harry appeared to pose no threat to him. His gun was now pointing at the floor between them and his finger was off the trigger.

"Yeah about that... can you just lend me some clothes, I'll disappear, and we can all pretend this never happened?"

"I can't let all this go. Something's off about this, and I'm not comfortable with just letting you walk away."

"This is what I get for playing nice?" Harry asked wryly. Lily was holding her wand within a few feet the shotgun, which gave him an interesting idea. It was easy enough to use his connection to her wand as a conduit to lace another anchor onto the firearm. "Well, I won't take it personally if you don't."

"What?" William was confused.

Harry mentally _yanked_, snapping his fingers for the sake of theatrics. The wand and the gun flew out the relaxed grips they were in towards him. The wand was moving faster so he snatched that out of the air first with his right hand, catching the shotgun with his left.

"Merlin's saggy left tit!" Harry cursed as he realized he'd forgotten about the sheet he'd been holding around him. It had fallen to the floor when he took his hands off of it. "I did not think that through," he muttered.

"Lily!" Mrs. Evans admonished sternly.

Harry flushed bright red as he saw Lily looking him over appraisingly. He fumbled a bit with the shotgun, trying to cover himself and keep the wand trained on the Evans at the same time. "Don't look! Turn around, all three of you," Harry ordered.

They did so reluctantly, trying to keep him at least peripherally in view.

Harry placed the shotgun on the ground and drew the sheet back over his shoulders.

The smart thing to do at this point would be to cast a Baffling Ward, now that obviously doing magic wouldn't start a shootout. Then he should Obliviate the Evans, and Confund Lily into not thinking about her wand for a couple of days so that he could use her wand to help him pick up one for himself somehow. Then he could sneak her wand back in and lift the Confundus Charm with no one being the wiser.

Unfortunately even the thought of doing that to them left a foul taste in his mouth. There was no way he'd actually be able to go through with that.

In the same situation Voldemort would have no reservations Obliviating them and making Lily think she'd lost or broken her wand if he couldn't just kill them outright. Even Albus would have been able to rationalize Obliviating and Confunding the family with the intent of returning the wand at a more convenient time, but Harry couldn't bring himself to do the same, not to the Evans. Lily wasn't his mother, but she wasn't nobody to him either.

_This would be so much more manageable with Obliviation. Stupid morals_, Harry pouted mentally. _Why can't I just be selfish sometimes?_ _Now how do I fix this?_

Harry took the opportunity to cast a Baffling Ward now that he wasn't going to be interrupted by a shotgun blast to the face. The Evans tensed up as he carved glowing purple runes into the air.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt anybody." he reassured. It took a bit of time to cast this particular ward, as it needed to be hidden from detection _as_ it was cast if someone with the Trace was in range at the time. Harry wasn't sure exactly how much range the Trace had, but he was pretty sure he was in it.

"What are you doing?" Lily asked. She stared at the runes, her brow furrowed.

"Oh, nothing important." Harry finished up and the runes faded into the air before she could get a good look at them. Not that a Hogwarts student would be able to puzzle out their purpose. A flick of the wand over the sheet and it tightened around his body, morphing into a button up shirt with a tie and slacks. "I'll be borrowing the sheet if you don't mind."

The tie was bright orange with moving snitches on it. _Oops_, Harry thought, tapping it with Lily's wand. It jumped over his shoulder and grew into a black cloak with a hood. _Much better_. A few more flicks gave him socks, shoes, and boxers. Commando wasn't really his style.

"Can you tell me why I still have to buy you clothes?" William asked his daughter dryly.

"I'm not _that _good at Transfiguration. That was like N.E.W.T level." Lily was looking rather impressed.

An unanchored Baffling Ward had limits to what it could hide, so Harry hadn't used permanent Transfiguration. Reversible inanimate to complex multipart inanimate was actually O.W.L level but being skilled enough with it to make clothes that looked like clothes, and actually fit in one step was beyond any N.E.W.T student not intending to obtain an E.A.G.L.E (Extremely Advanced Graduate Level Exam) for one of the more advanced branches of Transfiguration.

It was oddly pleasing to have someone so impressed with him. Harry knew it wasn't quite deserved, given that he could and did siphon knowledge and skill from the world's foremost Transfiguration expert. But for as long as he could remember impressive things had been _expected_ of the Boy-Who-Lived.

Even the people who knew he'd driven off a hundred dementors as a third year weren't properly impressed. Yes, they found it impressive, but not to the degree that doing something once thought nearly impossible should warrant. It felt a bit petty to be annoyed by that, but there was always this background feeling that he wasn't good enough when he wasn't absolutely amazing.

Being amazing was just living up to his name, and there was always a sort of patient disappointment (or glee, if they disliked him) if he was anywhere near normal. Harry couldn't help but think of the boa constrictor he'd seen in the zoo with the Dursleys when he was eleven. Dudley had been so annoyed with the snake for not doing anything, as though the reptile had an obligation to be interesting because he was watching.

Sometimes Harry felt like he was that snake trapped in a glass prison. The rest of the world was the fat, spoiled brat tapping on the glass, annoyed that Harry wasn't being entertaining every time they felt like looking.

_Would that make Voldemort me in that analogy? _Harry smiled as he realized something.

"I'm in Brazil," he murmurred. Annoying a snake that was behind glass was one thing. Far fewer people would be brave enough to do the same to one in the wild.

"You're in England." Lily was looking at him weirdly.

_Oops, didn't mean to say that out loud_.

"Metaphorically, I'm in Brazil," Harry started to explain, before stopping himself. "You know what, it's a long story. Let's just say I've had a weird day… maybe two days now."

"As long as you realize that you are literally in England," Lily asserted over her mother's shushing sounds. "Being held at wandpoint by some weird pervert I found naked in my room is one thing, but it'd really start being scary if you thought you were in Brazil."

Harry was a bit miffed, but he had to smile at her bravery in the face of a weird pervert holding her at wandpoint who may or may not think he was in Brazil.

"I'm not a weird pervert. This has just been a _colossal_ misunderstanding. Somebody I don't get along with ambushed me, and next thing I knew it was morning, I was completely naked, and it felt like my head had been cracked in two. Metaphorically speaking. I tried to apparate to my old room and ended up in yours for some reason." Harry was a bit surprised that he managed to explain it in a way that was all technically true. "Oh, and I smelled ashwinder eggs on your letter. And then you tried to crack my head in two. Literally."

"Your old room?" Lily noticed shrewdly. "Like at your parents house?"

"No, my Aunt and Uncle's old place. My… father isn't exactly someone I'm can take my problems to." Harry had been about to say parents, on account of the fact that they were dead, but in a weird sort of way he had brought his problems to his mother. Kind of. "And I tried to go to my place first, but the wards suddenly didn't like me. Three guesses who's responsible for that." Indirectly, sure, but still responsible. "The bastard made me homeless."

_Hey, this half truth thing is pretty fun,_ Harry thought. _I see why Albus liked to play it like this all the time._

"Your father kicked you out?" Mrs. Evans gasped. The look of abject pity that appeared on her face grated on Harry for some reason.

"Wait what? No, my father is…" _dead? And the guy with his face and name doesn't have a clue who I am? I shouldn't have tried to explain anything at all, this has gone way too far._ "Well… I don't live with my father. I was talking about the other guy. And you know what, that doesn't really matter. So now that you've heard my totally true and believable sob story, you'll let me borrow this wand for a few days so I can work things out?"

Even if Harry couldn't feel the _hell no!_ that Lily mentally screamed, the look on her face would have made it obvious.

_What am I doing? _Harry asked himself. What had started as a prideful need to explain that he wasn't in fact a weird pervert was edging towards a tentative plea for sympathy or help. He shouldn't be involving the Evans at all. _I need to get out of here._

"Right, that's unreasonable," Harry said before Lily could vocalize her objection. "And I suppose lending me enough money to buy one would also be out of the question."

Wands were not cheap. Seven Galleons hadn't seemed like much when he knew he had mounds and mounds of them in his vault. Harry'd never had to worry about money before, but Hermione had once mentioned that she'd actually gotten some kind of grant to help her pay for hers because she was a Muggleborn. The Weasleys hadn't replaced Ron's for the whole of second year, which probably harmed his education more than anyone wanted to think about.

"It doesn't feel like a question when you're holding us at the end of a wand," William said carefully.

Harry winced. "That's a fair point. This has gotten way out of hand." He flicked the wand over his transfigured cloak, applying several weak deception charms. A Notice-Me-Not, a Dimmer on the hood, and a few other Obfuscation charms. The trick was to make them weak and varied, not overpowering. A slash through the air briefly revealed the glowing runes as they broke apart and faded away. "I'm sorry for troubling you all, and I hope we can just forget this ever happened."

Unable to refrain from one last piece of theatrics, Harry let go of Lily's wand in thin air, where it hung there unaffected by gravity. With a soft pop, he was gone.

* * *

The interesting thing about Knockturn Alley was that it was laid out mostly in order of affluence. The closer the shop was to Diagon Alley the better the quality of its goods. For example Borgin & Burkes, famous for the rather questionable legality of their stock, was only a minute's walk into the alley.

A high-end shop like that would be useless for Harry's plan. It would be far too well protected.

Harry needed a wand. A free wand to be precise. Which meant he was going to need to steal one.

So he found himself deep within Knockturn Alley, in a very shady second-hand shop selling absolute junk. His Legilimency had verified that the shopkeeper knew that his merchandise was at least mostly stolen, so Harry had no moral qualms with the idea of stealing from him.

The selection of wands in the shop was truly abysmal. There were nine in total, none of them in very good condition.

Harry had come up with with around twenty ideas to try and pick up his old holly and phoenix feather wand from Ollivanders, every single one of them came up far short of rational. Once he had the wand in hand it was conceivable that he could simply blast his way through the wandmaker's Anti-Theft Wards and run the hell away, but that would end up with the Aurors on his tail. Not to mention he didn't want to do that to the old man. No, he'd have to get the money to buy it somehow.

Putting aside the issue of buying, stealing, or simply convincing Ollivander to give him the wand, there was still the question of what he could or should do.

The year was 1975. He was pretty certain of that at this point. But what did that mean?

Could he change history, or had this all happened 'before'? If he could, had he already changed things by showing up at the Evans'? If he could change things but hadn't so far, should he do so?

Harry simply didn't know. He needed time to think. And a place to sleep. And a wand.

He'd briefly entertained the idea of going to the current version of Albus and asking for help, but that idea had been nixed rather quickly. He knew the Headmaster, knew that he wouldn't trust _anybody_ with the kind of power and influence detailed knowledge of the next quarter century would give. That was even without considering the potential for Harry's mind to be unduly influenced by Tom's or Albus's memories. Albus would be terrified of the possibility that Harry could decide to crusade for the 'Greater Good' like he once had.

No, Albus Dumbledore would not trust him. Coming clean to his old mentor would be a horrendously bad idea. It was a sad truth.

_Well, at least the getting a wand is doable… sort of._

The wands were priced as two Galleons apiece, and they were likely the most expensive items in the shop. The shopkeeper, a tall and lanky fellow with a squashed looking nose, had reluctantly taken them out from the warded glass display case when Harry had expressed an interest in them. He'd tried to have Harry pick one out while they were still in there, but Harry had feigned a loss of interest, quoting one of Ollivanders' little sayings about compatibility. The potential loss of a two Galleon sale was enough to get them out.

The man hovered by Harry with a warning glare as he lightly touched each of the wands, trying to figure out which one was the best fit. He didn't intend to use it for very long, but even the best of these scuffed pieces of junk wasn't going to be very nice to work with.

Two of the wands were actually surprisingly compatible with him. Neither of which he'd want to use in the long term, but far better than he'd been expecting.

Finding a faint crack in one of the wands allowed him to make his choice. Using the same trick that he had on Lily's wand earlier, he laced the uncracked wand with a bit of his magic to provide and anchor. Then he picked up the wand with the crack in it as though to look at it more closely.

Briefly making eye contact with the shopkeeper yielded a strong feeling of anticipation.

Harry's eyes narrowed fractionally. _He knows it's cracked._ It wasn't much of a surprise. He'd picked a shifty looking shop to ease his guilt at stealing, but this wiped out any lingering bad feelings about his plan.

"How much is this–" Harry began to ask, flicking the wand as though to get a feel for it. There was a squealing sound, and a glowing blue blob leapt from the end of the defective wand, swerving up to splash against the ceiling.

"You twit!" The shopkeeper yelled, lunging forward to snatch the wand out of Harry's hand before he could do anymore damage. In that moment of distraction he didn't notice the other wand jumping off the counter and into the sleeve of Harry's cloak. "Out! Out! Get out of my shop!"

"I didn't mean to do that," Harry insisted apologetically. He was shoved in response.

"I don't care, out out out!"

The intent based Anti-Theft Ward had been utterly useless against Harry's Occlumency, but the other wards he'd managed to pick up on weren't something he could bypass without a wand. So he'd decided to obviously set off all the wards in an 'accident' as cover for them legitimately going off.

Harry was shoved repeatedly and none too gently as he meekly complied to complete the act. An extra hard shove sent him stumbling out the door into the Alley.

"Oof, watch where you're going punk."

Harry mumbled an apology to the figure he'd bumped into and tried to slink away. Knockturn Alley was actually fairly safe for those that didn't draw attention to themselves. Discretion was highly valued, and attention-grabbing disruptions were dealt with quickly and harshly.

"Oi, get back here and apologize properly."

_Bugger_. The plan had been to unsuspiciously disappear before there was any opportunity for the shopkeeper to notice he was missing merchandise. Whatever the man thought was a 'proper' apology was just going to delay him unnecessarily. _Maybe he won't follow me_.

A glance behind him dashed that hope. Not only was the man following him but he was also drawing his wand, and it looked like he had friends.

Harry ducked into an alleyway between a shady looking potions shop and a magical tattoo parlor. Keeping with his luck, it was a dead end.

"Not very bright, are ya laddie?" the apology seeker said as he and his two friends blocked the exit.

_Annoying_. _Guess I'll have to deal with this._ "Look, I'm sorry about bumping into you. It was an accident."

"Sorry isn't enough, not now that you've so conveniently put yourself in a nice dark alley." The man's grin was rather predatory. His companions, a man and a woman, chuckled darkly. The woman waved her wand around, casting a silencing ward over the area.

_They have amber eyes_, Harry noticed. Their sallow complexions, their facial bone structure, and the fidgety energy in their stances made the picture a bit clearer. They were werewolves, but not like Remus. Judging by the signs he could see, the onset of their transformation was a day or two away.

There were two fundamental ways that werewolves dealt with the effects of the oncoming full moon.

Those like Remus Lupin repressed the feelings and the urges caused by the curse in the days leading up to the full moon, and suffered for it. It was draining, made the transformation even more painful, and had long term negative effects on health.

Then there were those that embraced the curse, let it bleed into the rest of the month. The transformation would still only occur in the three nights of the full moon, but elements of it would seep into their human forms. The longer and more fully they embraced it, the more entrenched the effects would become. There were physical changes like the telltale bright amber eyes, elongated limbs, enhanced strength and magical resistance. But the real problem was the mental effects. Embracing the curse meant accepting the bloodlust, the sadism, and the desire to _hunt_.

These three were obviously not the repressing type, and by catching their attention and projecting the meekness he'd meant to use to melt into the crowd Harry had labeled himself as prey. That wasn't something they could ignore this close to the full moon–or rather it wasn't something they would want to ignore. The more they gave into the curse's urges, the better and stronger they felt.

Harry let himself fall in the calm of the Void, separating himself from his emotions. With the crap wand he was working with, he didn't want to leave any room for error. Their intentions would have been crystal clear even without his prodigious skill in Legilimency.

"This is the only warning I'm going to give you," Harry said coldly, knowing that they wouldn't heed it. It was his custom nonetheless. They weren't aware of his credo. "If you try to kill me, I'm going to kill you."

Early on in the war it had become clear to Harry that his enemies weren't afraid of the consequences of their actions. Losing a fight was rarely fatal. Prison was a minor inconvenience at first, and became a moot point once Voldemort took over the Ministry.

Albus and Tom's perspective on war and human nature had allowed Harry to skip years of angst and contemplation to come up with what he deemed the appropriate response.

If they came at him or others with lethal intent, he'd respond with lethal force. If only those prepared to be killed would try to kill, then only those who had sufficient motivation to take that risk would be a problem. It wasn't quite that cut and dry, but it was a good starting point.

Some cases were quite clear. If a wizard was killing or torturing someone for fun, Harry had no qualms about ending them. If they were participating in something unsavory due to some kind of pressure, they usually got one warning from him: _If I ever see you doing this again, there won't be a next time_. The 'I was under orders' excuse wasn't grounds for a pardon or much sympathy.

Some pressures were more excusable than others. Threats to families or friends, implicit and explicit, were a rather harsh reality.

Legilimency was a vital tool in determining who was acting of their own free will, and the combination of Albus and Tom's skill in the mental arts was the only reason Harry feel justified in the slightest.

Ron and Hermione had not been on board with his philosophy at all. Hermione in particular was up in arms about him 'playing at being Judge, Jury, and Executioner'. _You think you have the right to kill?_ she would ask every time he did so. His answer never seemed to make any sense to her. _I'm not exercising a right to kill. I'm just protecting the right to live in peace._

The three werewolves who had trapped themselves in the alleyway with him (although they thought it was he who was trapped) did not present any difficult moral dilemma to Harry. They wanted to torture and kill him for sport. If it wasn't going to be him now, it was going to be someone else later, and again and again. What they were planning on doing to him would earn them life sentences in Azkaban if they were to be caught.

Between death and prison, Harry thought that death was the more merciful option. Azkaban wasn't rehabilitation or justice–it was torture, plain and simple. Even if he would have preferred to put them in prison, that would necessitate actually letting them earn their sentence. On him or someone else.

"You're going to kill us?" The werewolf he'd bumped into chuckled, his savage grin becoming more pronounced. "You're not bright at all. _Lacerat–_AHHHH!" He fell back, blood and flesh exploding from his face as Harry used the counter curse to make the Mangling Curse backfire on him. It was easy to counter when you could read minds. The power behind his counter would have taken off his head had Harry's wand not been utter shite.

In the same motion of his counter curse Harry snapped out a black cord to wrap around the surprised woman's neck, cutting off her hasty "Cruci–" and yanking her into the path of the sickly yellow curse that the third werewolf cast. There was a loud crack as the curse impacted her shoulder, throwing her face first into the alley wall.

The first werewolf, his face bloody and mangled, spun back around howled "_Flammalorum!_" A surprisingly accurate flame whip snapped towards Harry, who caught it at the end of his wand. The werewolf on the end of the whip looked at Harry in shock, but the other one was already casting another curse.

A quick figure eight sent two loops spiraling down the whip, one of them colliding with the Bludgeoning Curse heading his way, deflecting it into the prone and moaning woman on the ground of the alley. She went silent.

The now chaotic loops of fire wrapped around the werewolf who had cast it, who tried to scream, sheer panic on his face. Harry didn't give him a chance, pulling sharply on the whip to dismember him. He parried three quick curses before the body parts hit the ground with wet thuds.

Harry's last enemy was clearly a cut above the first two. He hadn't frozen up in surprise, but had kept firing curses when met with unexpected resistance. And now he was rather expertly utilizing a dueling technique called banter.

Banter was the exchange of high speed curses and jinxes. The point was bog down the opponent in parrying and shielding to gain the upper hand, the tempo, and use the opportunity to _Strike_ with something heavy. Generally speaking, trying to use a _Strike, Smash,_ or an _Ender _without holding tempo just got you a facefull of banter. In one on one dueling, the victor was usually the one who gained the tempo with banter.

Unfortunately for his foe, Harry was on a level above conventional dueling. In a fight with Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, or Harry Potter, banter with minor spells simply wasn't a useful tactic. Their ability to cast finishers at the same speed as jinxes rendered banter completely ineffective against them.

It seemed as if Harry had been on the defensive the entire fight, because he hadn't really attacked. He'd simply parried and countered, because behind his attackers were innocent...ish bystanders. He didn't want a stray curse to hurt anyone unintentionally. Confident that he held the tempo, the werewolf decided to end the fight with a Disembowelment Curse.

Legilimency gave Harry a few seconds notice, not that it was necessary given the curse took five whole syllables to vocalize, and his enemy wasn't capable of casting this particular curse nonverbally. He caught the last piece of banter on the end of his wand, flinging it back to interrupt, followed immediately by his own finisher. The first motion hid the second.

"_Eviscera–_shit," the werewolf cursed, slapping aside his returned battering hex, not noticing the iron spike right behind it until it buried itself into his heart with a thunk. He looked at his chest in incomprehension for a few seconds as the life left his eyes, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

_That was pleasantly anti-climactic. _It had been a long time since he'd had such a relaxing fight. Even with his shitty wand, the difference between fighting Taint empowered Death Eaters and a couple random werewolves was ridiculous. Granted, only one of them had any skill worth noting. Speaking of…

Harry walked up to the corpse of the last werewolf, careful not to get any of the pooling blood on his conjured shoes. _I know him,_ Harry realized. He was one of Fenrir Greyback's entourage… one he distinctly recalled being alive in the future.

_What was his name? Ridger? Ruger? Rhigers, that's it. Rhigers and Greyback… why does that ring a bell? Well at least this answers one question_. Harry could change the 'past'. He wasn't in a consistent, self-maintaining time loop, unable to change what had already happened. Voldemort's ritual had succeeded in completely separating him from the timeline. Not that time was technically a line. It was more like wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff. Even Albus didn't have a clear understanding of that mess.

The question of whether he _would_ actually change things now that he knew that he could was a moot point. He'd already changed things, and he'd still change things merely by existing even if he went off to live as a hermit for the next twenty something years. Even if he could 'preserve' the previous course of events, the temptation to change them would likely be too much.

And suddenly the connection between the corpse at his feet and Greyback became crystal clear in the form of a Daily Prophet headline that he'd once seen while researching the vicious werewolf.

_DMLE Believe Fenrir Greyback, Julian Rhigers, and Rhiannon Dulcotte Responsible for Oban Massacre._

The Oban Massacre was a fairly infamous event of the first war. It was truly a tragedy, but it would have been a footnote in history if it weren't for what it was a prelude for.

Voldemort had paid Greyback, Rhigers, and Dulcotte to undergo their transformations in the muggle town of Oban on the night of August 20th, 1975. The death toll had nearly reached a hundred before Aurors were alerted and managed to arrive to the scene to try and chase them off.

The goal of the night hadn't been been senseless slaughter of muggles, although both Greyback and Voldemort had considered that a bonus. No, the goal of that night was the aftermath. The Ministry of Magic had spent the entirety of the next day and more besides that trying to deal with what came after. Most of the active emergency personnel had been sent to Oban and had been tied up there for ages. Medical care was needed for those who'd survived the attack. Aurors and Obliviators had a right nasty time trying to maintain the Statute of Secrecy and try to track down the culprits. Even Albus had gone there to help.

So no one was prepared for Voldemort and some of his minions to show up to Diagon Alley in broad daylight. They were there to make a point.

There was a Muggleborn shopkeeper who had been loudly and bravely saying that he wouldn't live in fear of Voldemort, and wouldn't live in fear of his name. He would actually say the word 'Voldemort' aloud. The Dark Lord had decided that warranted his personal attention.

Voldemort had put quite a bit of effort into making people fear everything about him, and the shopkeeper's attitude had drawn his ire. His showmanship, marching down Diagon Alley in broad daylight for the express purpose of killing _one_ man, was a devastating example of his grasp of psychological warfare. The message was clear. The Dark Lord Voldemort could kill anyone, in any place, at any time.

No one but Albus Dumbledore publicly said 'Voldemort' for the next sixteen years.

The date was August 19, 1975. It was clear to Harry that if he was looking to change history for the better, taking out Fenrir Greyback would be a fine way to start.

* * *

_I chose Oban for the site of the massacre because I found a reference to a 1967 werewolf sighting near there. And it must be true because it was on the interwebz!_

_The date of the full moon in August 1975 was the 21st. As best I can tell in HP werewolves transform three nights a month._


End file.
